Design better jobs: Proactive approaches to mental health in the workplace

In a recent study, Unmind, a workplace mental health and wellbeing platform, surveyed 850 HR professionals around the world. In the ANZ region, it found 95% of workers feel like work should be good for mental health and 56% of HR professionals say employee expectations for wellbeing support have increased in the past year, but only 63% of businesses have a sound wellbeing strategy in place.

The cost of living crisis is taking its toll, too, as 83% believe financial stress is inhibiting their workers’ ability to perform at work.

So how can business leaders better support their employees?

As a positive, awareness around mental health, both in the workplace and in society at large, is on the improve. Leanne Faulkner, who works as a small business mental health advocate through her business Fortitude at Work, agrees. 

“I’ve worked in the space for ten years and when I started, we didn’t even have resources that were targeted to the small business sector,” she tells SmartCompany. 

Matt Meffan, regional lead at Unmind, points to the journey of the past three years, when business leaders were called upon to take a more active role in supporting the mental health of fragmented teams. 

“People were distributed, they weren’t working in their usual locations, people had a lot of anxiety and personal challenges that they had to overcome, and I think it was really nice to see the way that businesses stepped up and put mechanisms in place to support their employees,” he says. 

Meffan also believes part of the focus on mental health can be attributed to the tight labour market.

“Everybody’s thinking about their employee value proposition. They want to retain the people that they have, they want to do the very best job of attracting people on that market,” he says. Creating a team environment where “everybody is contributing, everybody is doing their absolute best work, everybody wants to be there” is a major part of that.

Do small businesses have an advantage?

Today, more and more businesses are investing money to measure and assist the mental health of employees and teams. But not all small businesses have access to the same resources. However, Meffan, who works with with a lot of larger organisations, believes smaller businesses do have one “natural advantage”.

“In big business”, he says, “there’s this abstract concept of culture, and they invest a lot of money in defining and establishing what that culture’s going to look like. Whereas small businesses, I think, can have that direct relationship to the culture and the way that they operate.

“In those environments there’s probably less focus on the measurement and the data analytics and it’s more about what you can see and what you can feel.”

Faulkner, who works exclusively with sole traders, microbusinesses and small businesses, isn’t so sure she’d call it an advantage. “I’d label that as a challenge”, she says. 

“When you’re a small business, there’s really no intermediary there.” Conflicts, stress or things affecting the mental health of staff outside of work add to a growing list of demands on a small business owner’s time and energy.

“As a small business owner you can’t go to HR or an operations manager and say ‘can you help me with this?’ You really do have to have some understanding around workplace mental health, to be able to manage that effectively in a workplace, particularly where you’re so intimately working together.”

Using the many resources available is advisable. Both Meffan and Faulkner point to Safe Work Australia’s ‘psychosocial hazards’, which are currently being rolled out state-by-state. Business leaders must manage these under model WHS laws.

Meffan’s excited to see the results. The psychosocial hazards mean that “for everybody, there’s a universal language”.

“Everybody has the same set of requirements, and although it’s quite cumbersome for those organisations that didn’t have sophistication in place already, at least they know now that there’s clear direction for them,” he says.

Faulkner adds: “SafeWork, across pretty much all of our states and at a federal level, has been really working hard in this space around creating mentally healthy workplaces”. 

“Whatever state you’re in, you’re probably going to find a lot of resources around that topic and targeted to the small business sector as well, so I certainly wouldn’t ignore the resources available at both the federal and state level.”

Faulkner also recommends small business leaders check out Heads up, Ahead for Busines, and NewAccess for Small Business Owners, which received $10.9 million in government funding in October.

Better job design, better mental health

Putting more thought and collaboration into job design is a proactive way businesses can decrease the risk of stress, burnout and mental ill health at work. So, what does that look like at a business getting it right? 

“What it looks like is really thinking about the way we design jobs in our workplace, particularly in small business,” says Faulkner. “So, do you seek the input of your team, do you collaborate on what needs to get done and how it gets done, do your employees have some say and control over the way work happens in the workplace?”

“We see that’s important in both large and small businesses,” she adds. “We all feel more empowered and charged when we’ve got some control at work, and that’s very important in small business.”

At Unmind, too, job design is a primary focus. Meffan says it’s about the way work is distributed, and “making sure that jobs are designed equitably, and that there’s not one person in a team who feels as if they can never take time off, or as if everybody’s always waiting for them to deliver their work”.

“Making sure that we design those jobs to be fair and to be reasonable with someone’s working hours and capacity,” is an important consideration,” Meffan adds.

Leadership, communication and mental health

Beyond searching through the research to improve one’s mental health literacy, Faulkiner says it comes down to leadership, leading by example, communication and culture.

“This is a really critical point that we can do exceptionally well in small business,” she says. “Does the person who owns the business, and the person who’s probably working in that business alongside their team, are they modelling good mental health practices themselves?” 

“If I model good self care and self care practices, then what I’m actually saying to the team is that ‘as a business culture we value the mental health of the individuals in the business’.”

On culture, it’s: “Do we celebrate the wins together? Do we problem solve together? Do I model the sorts of values that I think that are important in my business? Do I provide regular feedback to my team, even when things are a bit tough? Am I providing feedback in a fair and equitable way?

“And then finally, and sometimes this is the easiest thing to do — it’s a good starting point — ‘do I normalise discussions about workplace mental health and do I know how to have a discussion with an employee about self care and about their mental health in a way that is respectful of that person?’”

Seeking additional help is advisable. “Small business owners wear so many hats already,” Faulkiner says; perhaps the counsellor hat shouldn’t be one of them.

As long as you can make someone feel supported in seeking professional help if needed. Faulkiner recommends asking yourself: “Do I have a selection of professional resources that I can refer to staff where they may be able to seek additional help?”

This article was part of a feature series on workplace and employment trends to support our Smart50 Workplaces program, developed in partnership with Employment Hero.

Download the ‘What are great employers doing differently in 2023?’ report to look at current trends in the employment landscape and best practices from Smart50 Workplaces Top Performers.

If you or anyone you know needs help, call:

• Lifeline on 13 11 14;
• Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36; or
• Headspace on 1800 850 890.